So Duncan put his coat back on and went outside armed with Jane’s mother’s old and warped snow shovel, while Jane took Jimmy upstairs and showed him the foldout bed in her mother’s sewing room. When they came back down, her mother said, “Jane, I’d like you to finish decorating the tree—”
“You don’t have the tree done?” Jane asked, surprised. Her mother was usually so organized.
“No need to sound so judgmental, dear,” her mother said. “I just didn’t get around to it. Now, while you do that, I’m hoping Jimmy will help me frost some sugar cookies.”
“I’d like that,” Jimmy said shyly. “Sugar cookies are my favorite part of Christmas, almost.”
“Mine, too,” Jane’s mother agreed. “You come on into the kitchen.”
Jane went into the family room and saw that her mother’s artificial tree was up and had lights on it. Boxes of Christmas ornaments were scattered around the room, some opened, some not. It seemed clear to Jane that her mother had begun decorating the tree but either lost interest or felt overwhelmed. Since she’d retired from Dr. Wimberly’s, her mother seemed to have lost some of her vitality. A wave of sadness made the room seem blue to Jane for a moment.
She shook it off and began poking through the boxes, locating her favorite ornaments in their paper cradles: the fruit-shaped ornaments she had disliked as a child—couldn’t they have snowflake ornaments like everyone else?—and the round gold ones with worn-off glittered stripes, the colored-glass ones she and her mother had made one year from a kit, now sadly tiny-looking.
In the kitchen, she could hear her mother talking to Jimmy. “Now, we start with white for the snowmen, and obviously we’ll do green for the trees, but what color should we do the reindeer?”
“Yellow,” Jimmy said. “It’s the closest to brown.”
Jane’s mood was improving as she hung the ornaments. It was soothing to handle these time travelers from her childhood, to feel the roughness of the snowball ornaments against her fingers. She unpacked the bright orange-and-gold flowered tree topper that must have been garish even when her mother purchased it in the seventies.
“You must be very excited about the baby, Jimmy,” her mother’s voice carried from the kitchen. “Won’t be long now.”
“I sure am,” Jimmy said. “We can already feel it kick.” He paused, and his voice grew deeper with concern. “But I’m worried, too. I don’t know anything about babies.”
“Neither does Jane,” her mother said promptly. In the family room, Jane rolled her eyes. “You can learn together.”
“But I’ll be afraid to even hold the baby,” Jimmy said. “You know how clumsy I am. What if I drop it?”
Jane’s cheeks flushed with shame. This thought had occurred to her, too.
“Oh, you don’t need to worry.” Jane’s mother’s tone was certain, authoritative. “Anytime you want to hold the baby, Jane will set you up on the sofa with pillows propped all around you and put the baby in your arms. You won’t possibly be able to drop the baby because of all the pillows, you see. Lots of people hold babies that way. I’ll bet you’ll be a great help to Jane.”
“But I won’t know what to do if it cries,” Jimmy said. “I won’t be able to change it or give it a bath. I’d be scared to death.”
“You don’t have to change the baby or bathe it to help Jane.”
“I don’t?”
“No, of course not,” Jane’s mother answered. “There are lots of ways to help, and you’ll figure some of them out.”
“It would help if you could just tell me what they are,” Jimmy said glumly. “I’m not very good at figuring things out.”
“Okay.” Her mother sounded undaunted. She paused for a moment as though gathering her thoughts. “Here’s what I think will happen. Not too long after they come home from the hospital, there’ll come a time when Jane will feed the baby, and burp it, and then the baby will get very sleepy—they always do when their stomachs are full. And then Jane will say, ‘Jimmy, can you hold the baby while I take a nap? Even just ten minutes would be wonderful,’ because new mothers are tired all the time. You’ll sit on the sofa with the pillows, and Jane will give the baby to you and go off to take a nap, and the baby will go right to sleep in your arms. And I’ll tell you a secret about babies, Jimmy—if you hold them right next to your chest so they can feel your heart beating, they’ll sleep much longer than they do in a crib. And the baby will sleep for an hour, maybe even an hour and a half, and Jane will feel so good when she wakes up from her nap. Just unbelievably good. She’ll say, ‘The baby slept so long! How did you do it?’ ”
“And what will I say?” Jimmy asked. “Do I tell her about the baby sleeping because of my heartbeat?”
“No, indeed,” Jane’s mother said. “You just say, ‘Aw, I’m good with babies! Nothing to it! Anytime you want a nap, you just give the baby to me!’ and Jane will say, ‘Oh, Jimmy, I would be lost without you.’ ”
“I sure would like that.” Jimmy sounded wistful. “Do you really think it will happen?”
“Without a doubt,” Jane’s mother said.
In the family room, Jane nodded in agreement. She would make certain of it.
* * *
—
In late January, Duncan had to go to Kalamazoo to deliver some lady’s bamboo Victorian side tables because he’d taken so long refinishing them that she’d moved out of town. But the lady was a jolly, forgiving type—she’d spoken to Jane on the phone and said, “Everything takes longer than you think it will. Once, I set all the clocks in my house ahead two hours and I was still late picking the children up from school!” She’d also hired Duncan to restore her antique patina-rusted French credenza thingy (Jane had a tendency to let furniture details wash over her) while he was down there.
Now the side tables were wrapped in many layers of quilts and moving blankets and secured in the back of Duncan’s van. Duncan checked on them one final time and then closed the van’s back doors. He turned to Jane, who stood shivering in the driveway.
“Are you sure I should go?” he asked for the third time.
“Yes, of course,” Jane said. “It’s only four days. I’ll be fine.”
Anyway, Duncan had to go. They needed the money. They always needed the money. Besides, Jane was actually looking forward to some alone time. Or alone with Jimmy, who would watch three episodes of The Amazing Race back to back with her without complaint.
“Well, okay.” Duncan pulled her into his arms. “Take care of yourself. I’ll miss you.”
“Me too,” Jane said, but she hopped up and down a little bit. The cold wind was making the hem of her black wool coat ripple like a flag.
Duncan drove away, honking once at the bottom of the driveway, and Jane got into her own car.
The morning sky looked blurry and smudged, and she thought it might snow. She was right. By the time she got to school, the snow was falling in thick, fast flakes. It made Jane dizzy to look up at it.
Her students looked out the window so often and so longingly that morning that Jane finally said, laughing, “Everyone, put down your pencils and stare outside for two minutes. I’ll time you.”
Her irritability had receded in her third trimester, and once again she could enjoy her students—appreciate their individuality, smile at their antics, marvel at how delightful they were. (Well, most of them.) She had told the class about the baby when she was twenty-four weeks along—none of them had figured it out despite the fact that the baby often kicked hard enough to make Jane’s shirt move—and they were mildly interested at best. Did she want a boy or a girl? Did she think Starbuck was a nice name? Could she still do a somersault?
But the children were very interested in Mrs. Crenshaw, who was going to teach class while Jane was on maternity leave. The children didn’t seem to think Mrs. Crenshaw would be up to the job. Could she peel an apple in one long s
trip, like Jane could? Did she know all the words to “Paul Revere’s Ride”? Would she know about the Attendance Messenger? What about the Kindness Tree? The Reward Jar? The Line-Up Song? Super Sequencing? Yes, Jane told them, Mrs. Crenshaw knew all that.
Mrs. Crenshaw was a retired teacher from Charlevoix, a quiet woman in her sixties with a soft voice and calm manner. Jane had had Mrs. Crenshaw visit the class twice already, and the children seemed mainly focused on the fact that Mrs. Crenshaw had worn the same gray cardigan both times. Did she wear it every single day? Didn’t she have any other sweaters? Did she really like gray? Was gray her favorite color? What kind of person picked gray as a favorite color?
“She’s really sort of a gray person,” Trent Bauer had said, and Jane feared he might be right.
She had, of course, prepared endless lesson plans for Mrs. Crenshaw, along with notes about field trips and class rules and hamster care. (The hamster, Cuthbert III, was getting along in years.) And now, after the two minutes were up, and Jane had asked everyone to get back to their worksheets, she wrote more personal notes in her teacher’s binder.
Please don’t put rice cakes in the Community Snack Box.
Austin needs to sit in the front row at all times.
Samuel never brings milk money; I pay for his milk.
If you read aloud from Mind’s Eye, please don’t read the chapter about the Bunyip. It scares everybody, especially Toby.
Nicole works best with Elizabeth or Chloe as a partner.
Haley and Grace B. should not sit next to each other, or stand together in line.
Cameron will talk to whomever he sits next to, so changing the seating plan will not make him quieter.
Tyler must never, ever be allowed to hold the hamster.
Students are only allowed to go to the bathroom in pairs.
This applies to Rory in particular.
Jane looked up and allowed her eyes to linger on Rory, who was staring out the window at the falling snow. (So were the rest of the children; the two-minute thing hadn’t helped at all.) Rory was a pale, thin boy with no-color hair and eyes as dark and troubled as shadows. He seemed to have great difficulty finding the bathroom, even though Jane had kept him after school to practice the route.
“See?” she’d said. “Just come out of the classroom and turn left and walk down this hall and then turn right.”
“That’s what I do,” Rory said. “And sometimes the bathroom’s there, and sometimes it’s not.”
“It’s always there,” Jane said gently. Did he think it was the Brigadoon of bathrooms? “Maybe sometimes you take a wrong turn. Let’s practice again.”
“That’s okay,” Rory assured her. “If it’s there, I go. If it’s not, I hold it.”
So Jane had made a new rule that students could only go to the bathroom in pairs, and this had caused great consternation and suspicion throughout the class. Why pairs? Why pairs all of a sudden? Did Jane think they were babies? What had happened? Had someone gotten lost? Was it a first grader?
“It’s just a rule I made,” Jane had said. “Like when I made the rule that Thursday was Cookie Day.”
The children had quieted right down. Cookie Day had fallen into their laps like a luscious golden ball from the heavens. They knew nothing of the cravings of pregnant women—nothing of the Thursday when Jane felt she could not make it past the bakery without stopping—but they were wise enough to realize that favors granted can be favors withdrawn. So the children went to the bathroom in pairs now, and Jane could rest easy knowing that if Rory had to go to the bathroom, he would get there. Privately, she thought that Rory’s attitude was a sensible one. The world was a shifting, dangerous, unpredictable place. Better to learn that early.
* * *
—
It was still snowing when Jane trudged through the parking lot that afternoon, and snow sifted in over the tops of her boots to wet her socks and chill her feet. She drove home carefully, the car cresting through small snowdrifts. The snowplows were out on the streets, but they were already falling behind the storm.
When she got home, Jimmy was clearing the driveway with the snowblower. He worked so hard to be responsible when Duncan was away. He looked like an arctic explorer: the colors of his hat and coat subdued by a covering of white dust, snow caked on his eyebrows, and ice crystals clinging to his red cheeks and nose. She parked her car on the cleared side of the driveway and got out, waving to him. He waved back, and she crossed carefully to the porch and let herself into the house.
She kicked off her boots and peeled off her wet socks. She curled up on the couch and turned on the Weather Channel. winter storm warning: 8–12 inches of snow expected. Well, good. No school tomorrow. She pulled the afghan over her.
She must have fallen asleep because the next thing she knew, it was after six and Jimmy was sitting on the sofa next to her, flipping through the channels.
“Is the baby kicking?” he asked Jane. He loved to feel the baby kick.
“Yes,” she said, smiling. She sat up and took his hand and held it against her stomach. The baby kicked obediently.
“How about that!” Jimmy said, as he always did. “Isn’t that something?”
“Yes, it is.” Jane yawned. “I’m just going to take a shower.”
She went upstairs, undressed, and padded naked into the bathroom. She reached behind the curtain and turned on the shower, and at that exact moment, her water broke.
For a moment, she was terribly confused. She couldn’t separate the two water sources. She turned off the shower. There, good. Problem solved. But, no, water was still dripping from between her legs. She stared at the puddle on the floor, which was already dampening the edge of the pale green bathmat.
She grabbed a towel and pressed it between her thighs while she shuffled to the bedside phone and called Duncan.
“Hey, Janey,” he said happily. “It took forever to get here. The roads are terrible—”
“I think my water just broke,” Jane said.
A slight pause. “You think or you know?”
“I know.”
“Okay,” Duncan said, and his voice was as calm and relaxed as ever. It was only when he began repeating himself that Jane realized he was thinking furiously. “Okay. Okay. You’re thirty-six weeks, that’s not too early. Not too early. Not too early at all. You’re at home, right? You’re at home. Good. Good. You call Dr. Skywalker and I’ll call Freida and have her drive you to the hospital.”
“All right,” Jane said. Something was lodged in her throat, making it difficult to speak. Panic. She swallowed, forcing it back down.
She called Dr. Skywalker’s office, and his answering service said he’d call her back in five minutes. She pulled on fresh underwear and black stretch pants and a cable-knit sweater that her belly pushed out like a hoopskirt.
The phone rang. She answered before the first ring was half-over.
“Hello, Jane!” Dr. Skywalker’s voice boomed down the line at her. “I hear your water broke.”
“Yes,” Jane said. “I was getting into the—”
“How much water?”
Jane tried to picture the Pyrex measuring cup in the kitchen. “Maybe a pint?”
Dr. Skywalker grunted. “Okay, you’d better go to the hospital. Hold on.” Jane could tell he’d put his hand over the receiver, and heard him shout, “Lois! When did you put the chicken in the oven?”
“Not five minutes ago,” a woman’s voice called in the background.
“How long does it take?” Dr. Skywalker asked.
“At least an hour,” Lois said. “It will get terribly dry if I turn up the oven.”
“Don’t do that,” Dr. Skywalker said. “It’ll be raw in the middle, and we’ll both get salmonella.”
“Do you want roast potatoes or scalloped potatoes?” Loi
s asked.
“I’m on the phone,” Dr. Skywalker said impatiently. “But scalloped, I guess.”
Jane thought she might start screaming. Couldn’t he eat a sandwich like a normal person?
“Hello, Jane?” Dr. Skywalker said.
“Yes?”
“You go straight to the hospital, and I’ll meet you there in two hours.”
An hour to wait for the chicken and another hour to savor his meal. Jane sighed. “Okay.”
She hung up and pulled her suitcase—packed only a few days ago—from the closet.
The phone rang again. It was Duncan.
“Freida and Mr. Hutchinson are having dinner in Harbor Springs,” he said. Dinner! Why was everyone worried about dinner in Jane’s hour of need? “They’re going to meet you at the hospital. I called Aggie, and she and Gary are going to pick you up in ten minutes.”
“I don’t want Aggie to drive me!” Jane nearly wailed.
“Aggie’s a good, fast driver,” Duncan said. “And she’s already on the way.”
“Does Gary have to come, too?”
“You know as well as I do that Gary doesn’t like to be alone after dark,” Duncan said. “He says the toilet whispers. Now, I’m going to start driving up, but I want you to know that I’m going to drive slowly and carefully.” How well he knew her, how well he understood her fears of another car accident. “If it gets bad, I’ll pull over and stop. Don’t you worry about me. You just get yourself to the hospital. Is Dr. Skywalker meeting you there?”
“Yes,” Jane said, her voice shaking a little.
“Good.” Duncan paused. If he said May the Force be with you! Jane would divorce him. It really was that simple. But he only said, “Jane, I know you can do this. I know it.”
They said good-bye, and Jane picked up her suitcase. At the top of the stairs, she felt a pain in her lower abdomen; a tugging, as though someone was pulling a string attached to her insides. She waited for the pain to subside, and then she walked down the stairs, holding the banister.
Jimmy was still watching TV. He looked up and saw her standing there with her suitcase, one hand gripping the newel post of the staircase.
Early Morning Riser Page 19
